IP: Dan Gillmor's eJournal -- Microsoft's Attack on Open Source: Linus Torvalds Replies

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> From: David Lesher <wb8foz () nrk com>
> Subject: Dan Gillmor's eJournal -- Microsoft's Attack on Open Source: 
> Linus Torvalds Replies
> To: farber () cis upenn edu (David Farber)
> Date: Sun, 6 May 2001 00:14:57 -0400 (EDT)
>
> So topical & succinct that it's worth the mention:
> .............
>
> http://web.siliconvalley.com/content/sv/2001/05/03/opinion/dgillmor/weblog/torvalds.htm
>
> {Dan Gilmor} asked Linus Torvalds
> what he thought of Craig Mundie's speech
> <http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/craig/05-03sharedsource.asp>
> about open source. His reply:
>
>
>
>
> I guess I'm not all that surprised. The basic argument seems
> to be that it's good for the economy to charge for intellectual
> property, so open source software cannot be good, while Microsoft
> is the most far-thinking company around and is doing it all for
> the good of the public.
>
> Gee, what a surprise.
>
> His claim seem to focus on the assertion that research and
> development is founded on the principles of "the importance of
> intellectual property rights". Which is entirely ignoring the
> fact that pretty much all of modern science and technology is
> founded on very similar ideals as open source.
>
> When Mundie wants you to think about all the work that companies
> have done in order to get patents, he also wants you to forget
> about all the work done by people like Einstein, Rutherford,
> Bohr, Leonardo da Vinci and a lot of other people who have done
> a lot more for humanity than most companies have ever done.
>
> And those people did it for the love of the art, not for some
> petty "intellectual property rights". Yet Mundie with a straight
> face claims that those intellectual property rights are the thing
> that drives science and technology. He seems to think that MS has
> done more for the US economy than the discovery of the electron
> ever did.
>
> His "shared source philosophy" is nothing but the status quo for
> Microsoft, and trying to make that status quo sound more like
> the open source model. He obviously doesn't "get" it.
>
> The strength of open source is not the source, but the intellectual
> property that goes with it - exactly the part that Mundie seems to
> hate so much. The fact that when you get involved in open source,
> you get equal rights to be involved. You can be another Leonardo da
> Vinci, you aren't relegated to just paying for viewing his works.
>
> I wonder if Mundie has ever heard of Sir Isaac Newton? He's not
> only famous for having basically set the foundations for classical
> mechanics (and the the original theory of gravitation, which
> is what most people remember, along with the apple tree story),
> but he is also famous for how he acknowledged the achievement:
>
> "If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood
> on the shoulders of giants".
>
> One of the greatest scientists of our time, having done more for
> modern technology (and thus, btw, for the modern economy) than
> Microsoft will ever do, acknowledged the fact that he did so by
> being able to use the knowledge (what we now call "intellectual
> property") gathered by others.
>
> Mundie throws all that away, because he wants Microsoft to own
> it all, and make tons of money on it.
>
> I'd rather listen to Newton than to Mundie. He may have been
> dead for almost three hundred years, but despite that he stinks
> up the room less.
>
> Linus



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